Amy Adams dominates in “Nightbitch”, a wholly original take on primal motherhood
Adams could become the leader of the awards pack with Marielle Heller's latest.
Motherhood is wild in Nightbitch, a playful, creative, and brutally honest portrayal of being a mom.
Written and directed by Marielle Heller, who adapted from the book by Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch is a frank dissection of female rage and post-pawrtum (sorry, not sorry) fracture.
Mother (Amy Adams) spends her days raising her two-year-old son, only granted a slight reprieve on the weekends when her husband (Scoot McNairy) returns, largely oblivious to the ways his wife is drowning. As her anger at his ineptitude grows, along with her sense of isolation and loss of sense of self, Mother undergoes a baffling transformation, seemingly becoming (at least in her own mind) a dog who runs through the streets of suburbia at night, howling at the moon.
Related: Amy Adams channels her rage — and transforms into a dog — in Nightbitch trailer
If this premise sounds ludicrous, well, it is (though in no way should you take the trailer as any reflection of the film's true nature). It takes a writer-director of Heller's insightfulness and an actress as skilled as Adams to make it the wildly entertaining and profoundly honest film that it is. There is mild body horror as Mother discovers that she's sprouting a tale or developing six extra nipples. But Adams plays those moments with such disbelieving delight that she makes them more humorous than horrific. Nightbitch has a highly specific tone, one part strident feminist manifesto, one part tongue-in-cheek monster movie, and one part domestic dramedy.
At first, Mother decides to embrace her inner canine, bonding with other moms over their most feral instincts and encouraging her son to pretend he's a dog too. These scenes could read like an undergraduate theater class assignment in the hands of a lesser actress, but Adams leans into the absurd wildness of it with gusto. Acting is ultimately unfettered make-believe, and Adams returns to that most basic and essential form of play in her work. She makes the absurd both entertaining and utterly real, employing her singular ability to approach everything from a Disney princess come to life to a doubting nun in a Pulitzer Prize-winning drama with the same level of commitment and belief. Adams has always been a performer willing to put it all on the line, but Nightbitch is her most fearless work yet.
Related: Amy Adams' acting 'freaked out' dogs on Nightbitch set so much they started lunging at her
McNairy is a worthy foil, a well-intentioned husband who simply doesn't get it. He manages to make his character empathetic rather than an outright selfish jerk — not an easy feat. He deftly sells the pack of character traits that account for Mother's pull between her love for him and mounting frustration at the inequity of their dynamic. "What happened to my wife?" he mourns. and she replies, "She died in childbirth!" It's a stinging summation of the emotional and physical metamorphosis women experience when they become mothers. The figure of a dog is an easy shorthand for the primal energy and complex emotions that take over with the all-encompassing new identity of "mom."
Mother explores her strange canine urges and sensations through a book about magical women, even pondering whether motherhood is akin to godliness because of their ability to create life. There's heaps of pointed commentary on the uneven labor that falls to mothers for any number of reasons, be it income disparity, gender roles, or other social constructs that feel impossible to escape.
"How many women have delayed their greatness while men around them didn't know what to do with theirs?" Mother asks. It's a punch in the gut of a question from Heller/Yoder. Heller and Adams don't pull any punches when it comes to the very real sacrifice of having a child and the struggle to push through that to find any sense of oneself on the other side.
Part of the brilliance of Nightbitch is the ways it doesn't stop at showcasing the isolation and loneliness of motherhood, cut off from a previous version of oneself and one's life. It then takes this fable a step further, underscoring the essential need for community as Mother befriends other moms from Book Buddies at the local library and learns that many of her darkest thoughts or embarrassing mistakes are common. This is summed up in a darkly funny scene where they recount the family pets they've "accidentally" killed or let loose out of their frustration with having to take care of just one more thing.
Related: Amy Adams wins major early acting award on Oscars trail ahead of Nightbitch
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Heller and Adams are a dynamic pair, finding ways to punctuate their bizarre tale with brutal honesty, off-the-wall humor, and a desire to celebrate the messiness and magic of motherhood. Kudos must also be granted to them both for their ability to wrangle so many dogs and children into cohesive, effective storytelling.
Nightbitch is a movie about insisting on your joy and fiercely holding tight to it, not in spite of your motherhood but alongside it. It is piercingly honest, remarkably sardonic, and breathtakingly brave in the way it lays bare some of women's deepest struggles and truths. But it is not a film that is anti-motherhood. It celebrates it as well, in all of its primal, animalistic, savage contradictions and complexities. In this dog-eat-dog world, Heller and Adams want us to see the pain of motherhood but the ecstasy too. Grade: A-
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